Monthly Archives: June 2003

Gail Worley has done it again: Another quality interview with some of rock’s most interesting characters.
Here is an amusing outtake from her recent interview in Ink19 with Al and Paul from Ministry:

If it’s cool to ask you this, what was your impetus for cleaning up?

Al: I found a new drug, and the drug is senility. When you get to my age it’s the ultimate freedom. I can go out in my Depends at 6 in the morning and walk down the rain soaked street and say hello to my neighbors wearing nothing but that and combat boots, and it’s chalked up to senility. And you can’t do that with drugs. Senility is much cooler…and it’s legal. It’s a legal high.

How long have you been senile now?

Al: Four months. Four months with nothing. Life’s a bowl of cherries now, not a bowl of pits. It’s good.

The most amusing part of last night’s Adolescents show at Alex’s Bar in Long Beach was not the crowd, it was not the bands, it was not the drunk broken bottle blood squirts, it was not my drunk friends, it was the security patrol guy.
Liz Ortega and I departed the bar/club and paid our respects to the Steve & Tony “receiving” line, walked down a long alley to the next side street where our cars were parked when a security patrol car pulled up next to us. The security guard rolled down the window to ask where we were coming from.
“A concert at Alex’s”, I reply.
“Oh,” says the security guy, “but why is everyone wearing black?”
Liz and I look at each other. We are both dressed in black. Everyone pouring down the alley is dressed in at least 50% black.
“It was a punk concert.” I said.
“Oh,” says the security guy. He looks baffled. Decides there is no threat, and drives off.
Now, the Adolescents show was in the LBC. Did I not get the memo, or has Long Beach instituted a color only dress code? Really. As I drove up Redondo towards PCH, all the girls pouring out of the lesbian bars were wearing jeans and black. Someone forgot to give them the color memo, too.
But maybe jeans count as color? Thus, the Alex’s Bar patrons in their black, grey and red dickies pants count as black. Hmm… this fashion conumdrum warrants more thinking.
When the powers that be that reside in the fashion design studios of NYC and Milan decide to make clothes that are not scary pale hippy-dippy-trippy-gypsy 70s knock-offs and actually go to real colors like bright & dark colors, then maybe I will add some non-black to my wardrobe.
Just say no to biege, khaki, pale pink, pale whatever. BLECH!
Give me cranberry, give me wine, give me sapphire blue, give me dark green, give me deep royal purple, give me vibrant apricot! Wishful thinking on my part.

I have decided that I ought to be VERY afraid of my own musical tastes. Most folks get frozen in their music selection and choices somewhere between high school and college and then go on to torture all of their children and friends with endless rounds of the 60s, 70s, 80s, or even 90s, depending on which decade they plugged into pop or rock or rap music.
Me, after much testing and experimentation, I have settled into what I listened to from 1979 – 1983… Punk and all of its recent descendents. Sigh…
I tried Metal (short, curvy girls who are little in the middle and big on the ends Do Not look good in spandex and feathered hair, trust me), Industrial, and Grunge, but no go, it didn’t stick. I tried the swing revival, but was accused of being too dedicated to punk and rockabilly. I actually showed up at the Derby frequently in 1998 wearing Trux and non-1940s clothes, and was chastised by the swing nazis… I tried rockabilly and alt-country, which I still enjoy, but it doesn’t pack enough punch for this hard, fast and loud junkie (with all due respects to the Bell brothers). I was still playing the U.S. Bombs, One Man Army, Real McKenzies and CH3 all through the 1997-2000 heyday of the swing/rockabilly.
Now, here I am, age 35, when I should be listening to The Lambrettas or DePeche Mode or Nirvanna or (God Forbid) Celine Dion or Moby, instead I am listening to at this very moment to The Business’ new cd “Hardcore Hooligan“. A whole cd dedicated to street punk songs about Football/Soccer. God Bless the English. And it is good.
Many of the bands who are now the inheritors, 20 years after the original punks of the 1977 British Punk, 1981 Oi!, and 1981 California Hardcore scenes, have either updated the sound or have codified it. Of the Original bands, the Business (London, UK), Slaughter and the Dogs (UK), 999 (UK), TSOL (CA), Adolescents (CA), and CH3 (CA) are still playing out, touring, and putting our new records. Of the “new” bands who are reviving the sound and not pandering to the dumbed down 14 year old boy sounds of Blink-182 and the like are The Forgotten, Dropkick Murphys, Rancid, One Man Army, U.S. Bombs, The Stitches, The Briefs, etc etc etc.
Give me fast, loud, bouncy and melodic with good lyrics and a political consciousness and I am happy…

That band… you know the one… That band, the one that got the #1 slot in last week’s OC Weekly’s 129 Greatest OC bands Ever! Well, rumor has it that they will be playing tomorrow night at Alex’s Bar in Long Beach.
Given the response of their last “secret” smallish club style show, over 300 people smashed into the Doll Hut (capacity 49) in August 2001, I would recommend wearing full body armour, bringing your own body guards, and a portable air conditioner. I will not be attending, not out of a lack of love for the band or Mr. Soto, but due to a lack of funds and no guarantee that Mike M. and Karl I. will be there to lift me out of trouble again…
UPDATE:
Sat. June 28, 2003 at 11:13am
Steve has called and confirmed that The Adolescents really will be playing Alex’s tonight and full body armour might be a good idea. I will be going after all.

Women who were exposed while still in the womb to the pesticide DDT are more likely to experience delays in getting pregnant, according to a study of California mothers and daughters published today in an international medical journal.

The report by the Public Health Institute in Berkeley is the first scientific evidence that DDT that collects in women’s bodies can affect their female offspring many years later, when they reach adulthood and attempt to reproduce.

The findings support a controversial theory that pesticides and other environmental contaminants that mimic sex hormones are altering human fertility and health.

At the end of the LA Times articles:

Another study recently reported that men exposed to pesticides have as much as a 30-fold reduction in sperm quality.

In a study in India, a group of men who worked with DDT was found to have decreased fertility, and a significant increase in still births, neonatal deaths and congenital defects among their children. Israeli men with unexplained fertility problem were also found to have high blood levels if DDT.

God only knows how I have this site filed under “Design” in my Bookmarks… but WOW! and Hee hee hee…. All the way home… Cough Cough Cough.
Anywho, I just got off the phone with Thomas. I was explaining the concept of blogging to him, when I told him I would send him links of design folks who blog. There I am, looking in the “Design” section of my bookmarks, when I stumble across this…http://www.gmunk.com/2001_NYC_update/
Make sure to click on the man in the fun striped bathing suit to see all his poses.

Today the LA Times and KPCC both reported that Bald Eagles are officially back in Southern California for the first time since the 1930s. What they mean is that there are two nine week old eaglets living in a nest near Lake Hemet.
The LA Times article states:

If the 9-week-old eaglets survive, federal and state wildlife officials say, they will have begun repopulating the southern end of their historical nesting range before bald eagles were all but wiped out in California by coastal development and the manufacture and use of the pesticide DDT.

The farthest south that successful nests have been found in California since recovery efforts began is in central Santa Barbara County, said Ron Jurek, who coordinates bald eagle recovery tracking statewide for the Department of Fish and Game.

The LA Times article was front page in the California section and had two large pictures. When I saw the first picture and the headline, my heart jumped. After reading the whole thing, my frist thought was “Thank God, we have finally done something right.”
This is the first nestlings that have made it past the egg stage in SoCal since the 1930s. DDT in the environment weakened eggs to the point of no live hatchings, and development encroached on the coastline and lakes of the area. Bald eagles have in the last few years returned to Big Bear Lake in the winter time, but go north to breed. Until now.
Many of you know that I am a big bird fan and feel very frustrated by the continual unstoppable development of SoCal. When nature and common sense prevails over rich developers making more money, I feel encouraged. The DDT that destroyed the eggs of eagles, pelicans, and many other birds certainly effected the whole of the ecosystem and not just the birds. There is still a huge plume of DDT off the coast of Palos Verdes and South Santa Monica Bay.
I have seen 2 bald eagles in the wild in my life. First one was in the summer of 1990, when my dad and I were putting around the shoreline of Catalina Island, near White’s Landing, and we had the pleasure of watching a bald eagle fish in a kelp bed no more than 50 feet from our little boat. The second time was last summer as my mom and I were driving around June Lake (in the Sierra Nevada mtns.) and a bald eagle was soaring above the lake and road. Truly amazing.